Groans turned to cries of anger when new directors Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura claimed they wanted Dark Souls 2 to be more straightforward and accessible to players who are new to the Dark Souls experience. While change can be a good thing, fans are worried this goal of “accessibility” can change the experience for the worse. If handled carefully, Dark Souls 2 could be bigger, better, and more brutal than its predecessor. If not, it won’t be a pretty sight. These are just a few things that could cause Dark Souls 2 to fail:

Focusing too much on “easing” the player in

[adsense250itp]Shibuya has said that he wants to bring a lot of focus into the introductory period of Dark Souls 2. Instead of throwing players into the Dark Souls experience he wants to give them a better idea of how the game works and needs to be played. The problem? Neither of the Souls games had much of an issue with this. Both games taught you the basics of combat, how important it was to think and plan during fights, and especially how to die. Even in the first few hours of the game, the opening areas soon become much easier. Players who wished to grind and get better could do that. If too much time is spent on introducing the game, it will feel too forced and take away from the excitement and danger of the experience.

Making everything obvious

Another criticism of Shibuya and Tanimura’s direction is that they want to focus on making mechanics and story elements less vague. Though there is nothing wrong with making parts of the game easy to understand, if everything is made obvious to the player then it will take away from some of the mystery and the fun. Part of the fun of Dark Souls was not only digging in to the story of the game but also the mechanics. Sure, they weren’t exactly clear, but with enough time (and word of mouth), a lot was revealed. If everything is clearly expressed to the player, then there is less fun to be had when something new is found.

Changing the core combat mechanics

This should be obvious. Perhaps one of the most brilliant aspects of Dark Souls is how tight and well executed its combat mechanics are. It has often been said that games like Skyrim would be better if they had combat similar to Dark Souls. The balance of stamina, attacking, blocking, and magic is excellent. If anything dramatic were done to those systems, chaos would ensue.

Shipping with glitches

Games have glitches, that much is given. In a complex and massive game like Dark Souls, there are going to be glitches as well. However, some of these glitches can break the experience. Within a few days of release, people already found ways to gain infinite “experience” points (the same glitch was also in Demon’s Souls). The game also received many patches which balanced several things including armor, items, and more but also gave early adopters some advantages along with disadvantages. The good news is that such issues should be addressed before Dark Souls 2 releases.

Using Co-Op as a bullet point

In the quest to make Dark Souls 2 more accessible, one hopes that this doesn’t mean also making the game more mainstream. Online mechanics and certain “co-op” elements have been implemented in the series before but they always complimented the nature of the game. Developers (possibly influenced by the publishers) are finding ways to constantly push cooperative mechanics into games that don’t need them. Giving Dark Souls 2 a true co-op mode would alter the experience into something it shouldn’t be.

As long as these things are avoided and the trademark difficulty is in place, Dark Souls 2 will be a fantastic experience. The game is rumored to be released near the end of 2013 or possibly sometime in 2014. That should give the new directors plenty of time to prove all the worried souls wrong.

Ben Sheene

Ben is from Kentucky where he originally began playing games (an activity he still continues to this day). With a love for writing he graduated from Centre College with a BA in English. He recently moved to California to pursue whatever future endeavors were there. A passion for music, gaming, blogging, and existing keeps him up at night and crafts him into the person he is today.

The article is called “5 Things That Will Cause Dark Souls 2 to Fail” while in the article you’re saying “These are just a few things that could cause Dark Souls 2 to fail:”. The title of this article is deceiving because you’re speculating and it is not certain that Dark Souls will fail because of these things.

The title should be “5 Things That Could Cause Dark Souls 2 to Fail”.

Peixinho

I don’t think an improved co-op would ruin the game… the truth is, anyone preferes to explore things with friends! Exploring stuff in dark souls with my friends was really cool, and made my gaming experience a lot better, I would say. If you are given, the choice to call someone to your world to help you out, why not be able to call a friend? Why does it have to be a stranger?
The dark souls co-op never stopped me from playing with my friends, the only problem was the time it took us to connect to each other, and since we died a lot, and I mean A LOT (I don’t really need to emphasise it this much, anyone who played the game understands), we would have to go through all the connection troubles again, and it would takes a lot of time again.
Some people might think this will ruin the game, and that it’ll make the game really easy, but it’s just my opinion. I’ve always wanted an RPG game with a multiplayer, and when I bought dark souls, and found out that it was both an RPG with a multiplayer and the brilliant, magnificent game that it was, i got super excited! It just pissed me off that playing with my friends was so hard…

Ethan Smith

I’m not too worried about too much getting changed in the next game. This is From Software, makers of Armored Core, we are talking about; if anything, they will err on the side of too LITTLE innovation in each new title.

The original Dark Souls was not a huge departure from Demons’ Souls and mostly just tightened up the gameplay.